Indians of the Eastern Shore 
Of Maryland. 




By Fi G. Speck 

OF THE 

Department of Anthropology 
university of pennsylvania 

BEFORE THE 

EASTERN SHORE SOCIETY 

Of Baltimore City 

Maryland Day Celebration 
Hotel Rennert 

March 29th, 1922. 



17 



Richard Hill, Chief of the Canadian 
Nanticoke. 




Map showing the location of the Algonkian peoples of Maryland. 
(Triangles indicate known settlements where their 
mixed-blood descendants still reside.) 



Indians of the Eastern Shore 
Of Maryland. 



There are few events in the history of the eastern colonies more 
striking to the imagination or less generally known than the incursion of 
the Algonkian speaking peoples from the central states into the region 
of the Atlantic seaboard. That the historic Algonkian tribes, however, 
did emerge from across the Alleghanies and invade the coastal regions 
is a truth vouched for in many forms, among which the traditional 
testimony of the people themselves is by no means the least important. 
The Delawares, the Mohegan, Shawnee, and Conoy, all had more or 
less corresponding versions of a general migration legend, which may 
have referred to an event that took place not much anterior to the 
fourteenth or fifteenth century, let us say. Who the original and previous 
human inhabitants of the Chesapeake tidewater region could then have 
been is a matter of serious doubt, even if we assume that in this im- 
mediate region of the Atlantic coast any such existed. We have good 
reason to believe, however, that to the north in New Jersey, New 
York and New England and again southward in the Carolinas and 
Florida, human occupation was much earlier than here, since the faunal, 
floral and geological conditions there are rather different. Archaeological 
disclosures, moreover, which have been made in the Chesapeake tide- 
water region do not point to any great age of human industry or to 
human inhabitation of great antiquity. We are, accordingly, concerned 
with the problem of the outside culture identity and affinities of the 
h storic tribes whose residence in the region is so interesting to us. 



Page One 




Where did they come from if, like a number of other tribes in the 
eastern United States, the Nanticoke and their relatives were not of 
ancient descent in the region where they were found by the first white 
people who came to the shores of the Chesapeake? Even the Pow- 
hatans of Virginia told the Jamestown authorities that their ancestors 
had been in Virginia only about 300 years before the coming of the 
English. The traditions of the Nanticoke claim that they had their 
earlier situations somewhere in the central regions of the United States, 
where they dwelt as members of a great tribal group before its subdi- 
vision into the branches which later became known to the first white 
explorers. Without actually knowing when or how the first movement 
toward the east began among these people, our imagination is left to ■ 
picture to itself the causes and circumstances of its inception. We are 
told in the national migration legend of the Delawares which has come 
down to us in the form of a text, accompanied by a pictorial record, 
published by Dr. Brinton, and called the Walam Olum, that warfare 
began the movement across the central prairies in Indiana and Ohio, 
and that subsequently the Alleghanies were crossed, at which point the 
Shawnee and Nanticoke went south. The main migration kept on 
eastward ultimately reaching the Atlantic ocean and settling down on 
the rivers of eastern Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. This accounts 
well enough for the Delawares, the neighbors of the Chesapeake bay j i 
tribes on the north, but it tells us little about the further movements i 
and whereabouts of the Nanticoke in whom we are now interested. 
That they occupied the country about the upper Chesapeake region 
we know by the fact that at the time of European contact these bands 
became known under the name of Nanticoke and appear to have > 
formed a confederacy with the Nanticoke chief or "emperor," as he 
was called by the Marylanders, at its head. A branch of this division 
separating from the main stream passed to the western shore of the 
bay and occupied the region between it and the Potomac, acquiring 
the name of Conoy, but nevertheless retaining its political affiliations 
with the Nanticoke. The dialect of the Conoy was not recorded in 
those days so we have no means of knowing accurately in how far it i 
differed from that of the Nanticoke proper. 

The Nanticoke Indians of Maryland were first encountered in 
1608 by Captain John Smith. They then occupied the peninsula be- 
tween the Atlantic ocean and Chesapeake bay. Smith spoke of them 
in the following terms: 

"We set saile for the maine; and fel with a faire river on the 

Page Two 



East called Kuskarawaocke. By it inhabit the people of Soraphanigh, 
Nause, Arsek, Nautaquake ; that much extolled a great nation called 
Massavvomekes. 

"On the east side of the Bay, is the river Tockwhogh, and upon 
j it live a people that can make 100 men, seated some seaven myles 
within the river; where they have a Fort very well pallisadoed and 
mantelled with barks of trees. Next them is Ozinies with 60 men. 
More to the South of that East side of the Bay, the river Rapahanock, 
neere unto which is the river Kuskarawaock. Upon which is seated 
a people with 200 men. After that, is the river Tants Wighcocomoco 
and on it a people with 100 men. The people of these rivers are of 
little stature, of another language from the rest (referring to the Pow- 
hatan sj, and very rude. But they are on the river Acohanock with 
40 men, and they of Accomack 80 men doth equalize any of the ter- 
ritories of Powhatan, and speaks his language who over all doth rule 
as King." 

Subsequently the Nanticoke are heard of through their connec- 
tion with the related tribes along the Susquehanna and on the western 
shore of Chesapeake bay. References bearing exclusively on the Ind- 
ians who remained on the eastern shore are scanty and convey little 
information concerning their mode of life. From 1641 to 1648 they 
were at war with the colonists. By 1748 most of the Nanticoke and 
Conoy of Maryland had moved up the Susquehanna to the Iroquois, 
with whom they gradually became affiliated. By 1799 the Nanticoke 
had sold all their land in Maryland. Since it is not the intention in 
this paper to deal with the bands of the western shore, nor with the 

I Nanticoke in general after their adoption by the Iroquois in 1753, we 
shall have to leave the historical documents and depend on local tradi- 
tions of the people of the region. 

The northward movement of the confederated Nanticoke tribes 
forms nevertheless a dramatic chapter in the history of the region. 
For many generations these bands, harassed by the warlike and in- 
domitable Iroquois of central New York, had suffered between the 
encroachments of their white and Indian neighbors. Yet after all 
they found a safer haven among their former Iroquoian enemies than 

i among the Christians who occupied their land, for the political ideal- 
ism of fhe Iroquois league, harsh though the methods may have been, 
showed forth in the policy of adopting subjugated peoples and giving 

i them complete freedom besides inviting them to reside in their midst. 
Thus the Nanticoke began to draw away from their old lands and 



Page Three 



their Christian neighbors. We hear of them, joined by the Conoy re- 
siding at several points along the Susquehanna where they were visited 
by several famous Pennsylvania missionaries. 

The subsequent events in the history of the two tribes then in 
their last migration northward to the council fires of their later friends, 
the Iroquois, shows them located in 1742 at Conestoga. They gradually 
made their way up the Susquehanna stopping at the present sites of 
Harrisburg, Shamokin, Catawissa, and Wyoming. By 1765 they had 
worked up across the New York State line and were settled respect- 
ively at Owego, Chugnut and Chenango. They had come completely 
under the dominance of the Six Nations and were recognized as one 
of the "props" of the famous league of the Iroquois. 

Now in far-off Ontario they reside with the nation which adopted 
them. They have become almost completely denationalized by the 
Iroquois. Not one, so far as I know, can speak the Nanticoke lan- 
guage. The languages they speak are Iroquois and English. Neverthe- 
less, in 1914, I visited the Nanticoke incorporated with the Six Nations 
at their village near Brantford, Ontario, in order to learn something of 
the present state of the tribe. There are about two hundred who class 
themselves as Nanticoke, and they are very proud and tenacious of the 
name. Few of their old customs are remembered, although they have 
a keen interest in the country of their extraction. No doubt an inten- 
sive study of the tribe today would reveal many beliefs and perhaps 
some customs which were brought from old Maryland. About sixty 
years ago the Nanticoke sent a delegation to Maryland to trace other 
members of the tribe, but they found none. Had they however, gone 
over to Delaware they would have found some of the descendants for 
whom they were searching. In Canada the tribe is governed by its 
own officers. The head man still bears the name of "Emperor," which 
carries over the old custom of naming chiefs prevailing in colo- 
nial days in Maryland. One point of interest may be noted in con- 
nection with the Canadian branch of the tribe, namely, that the words 
which have been recovered in their language seem to differ somewhat 
from those recorded in Delaware in 1792. Both are supposed to be 
Nanticoke, yet a dialectic difference undoubtedly is met with and, 
since the tribes of the western shore of Chesapeake bay contributed 
largely to the make-up of the Canadian Nanticoke, I feel inclined to 
classify the present-day Canadian branch of the tribe as largely con- 
sisting of Conoy. 

The last authentic literary reference, however, to the Nanticoke 



Page Four 




Chiefs and councilmen; group of Nanticoke delegates from Indian River, 
Delaware, visiting Dover. 





Canadian Nanticoke hold their meetings. 



[5] 



in their old haunts, and the one to which we are indebted for know- 
ledge of the language, is that by William Vans Murray who in 1792 
sent in a few ethnological notes and a vocabulary collected at the Nanti- 
coke village Locust Neck Town, Goose creek, Choptank river, Dor- 
chester county, Maryland, at the instance of Thomas Jefferson. In a 
letter accompanying the vocabulary he wrote that the tribe had then 
dwindled to nine persons. They lived in "four genuine old wigwams 
thatched over with the bark of the cedar." They were governed by a 
"queen," Mrs. Mulberry. The rest had removed to "the Six Nations 
They went to the Senecas often." A note to their vocab- 
ulary adds that Wyniaco, their last "king," had died about 75 or 80 
years before and that his body was kept preserved in a mortuary house. 
The custom of preserving the bones of the dead was early recorded 
of the Nanticoke. The names of two Nanticoke villages are given in 
this notice. "Ama-Namo-quun, the name of the Indian town of Lo- 
cust Neck, Mattappenen the name of the Nanticoke Indian town," 
Beverly in 1722 mentioned the principal village of the tribe as Nan- 
duge, with 100 inhabitants, ruled by an "empress." 

Regarding tribal identity and history, a few interesting fragments 
of tradition still survive among the descendants on Indian River. The 
Nanticoke are said to have inhabited the coast and inlets not much 
farther north than Indian River. Inland, however, they ranged west- 
ward across to Chesapeake bay. Evidently the present Nanticoke 
at Indian River are descendants of the nucleus which originally 
stayed in Delaware after the general break-up of national life about 
1748. The country north of the Indian River district, according to 
surviving tradition, was neutral ground between the Nanticoke and the 
Delawares proper, who, the former assert, were not always on the 
best of terms with the Nanticoke of Indian River. This would make 
the ancestry of the Cheswold branch of the Indian descendants in Del- 
i aware not fundamentally Nanticoke, but Delaware. Of course it 
1 should be remembered that intermarriage and removals have been fre- 
quent between the two bands, so that now, to all intents, they are prac- 
tically the same, differing only in the degree of white and negro inter- 
mixture. According to Chief Clark's testimony, early in the last 
century many families emigrated from Indian River to the west, for the 
purpose of joining some tribes across the Alleghanies. This probably 
refers to the general Indian emigration from the coast to the adjacent 
| slope, during the middle of the eighteenth century, in company with 
; the Delawares and others. 



Page Nine 



Subsequent to this movement representatives from the departed 
band occasionally returned to Indian River to visit their friends and 
relatives; particularly to visit old Mrs. Lydia Clark, the grandmother 
of the present chief, W. R. Clark, who was then the only person who 
spoke the Nanticoke language and who wore in part the native cos- 
tume. After her death, probably between 1840 and 1850, these Ind- 
ians did not come again, and the Indian River remnant was left with- 
out communication with its kin. Again, however, a number of fami- 
lies emigrated from Indian River. 

These seem to have been the last important events in the history 
of the community, excepting the occasion of a church quarrel over the 
admission of negroes to church and school privileges, which resulted 
in the division of the band into two factions. The original exclusive 
party is still known as the Indian River or Warwick Indian community, 
the seceders, who admit social rights to outsiders, calling themselves 
the Harmonia people. These later distinctions, however, are of minor 
importance. 

The present-day Nanticoke in Delaware form self-recognized 
communities, with their own schools and churches, and possess a de- 
cidedly endogamous tendency which refuses particularly to recognize 
marriage with negroes. They style themselves variously "Nanticokes," 
"Moors," and "Indians." This feeling of local seclusiveness is a 
marked trait among them and was noted by Babcock who visited the 
tribe in 1899 and wrote a short but interesting account of what he saw. 

Physically the community exhibits a great lack of racial homoge- 
neity, the types of physiognomy, color, and hair ranging from the 
European, the Mulatto, and the Indian through all the usual grada- 
tions. Some individuals have straight hair, fair skin, and blue eyes; 
some have brown skin, brown eyes and curly hair; others have broad 
faces and straight, black hair, the color and general appearance of 
Indians. As might be expected among people of mixed blood, it is 
common to find these characteristics divided irregularly among the 
members of the same family. 

One interesting tradition current among the members of the band 
is that they are descended in part from a crew of Moorish sailors who 
were shipwrecked near Indian River inlet, escaped to the shore, and 
intermarried with the Indians who were then living there. This story 
is well known in the region and is repeated with several variations. 
One states that on board the wrecked vessel was an Irish princess; 
another claims that the vessel was owned by a Moorish prince; another 



Page Ten 



that the Moors were pirates from the Spanish main, and to this they 
attribute their local name of "Moors. " As important as this story seems 
to be, I was unable to secure any consecutive version worth recording 
as testimony in the words of the narrator. Those who know of it give 
only the general facts as mentioned above. A few discredit the story 
altogether. On the whole, however, I am inclined to credit the general 
claim that Moorish sailors might have been shipwrecked on the treach- 
erous shoals along the Maryland or Delaware coast and sought the 
shelter of the Indian natives. When this might have happened it is 
difficult to say, unless we assume that it was during the years of piracy 
on the high seas in the seventeenth and the early part of the eighteenth 
century (1650—1720 approximately). The importance of the term 
"Moors" in connection with the pirates of the West Indies suggests 
relationship in this case. 

Heckewelder states that the Nanticoke were distinguished from 
neighboring tribes by a darker color. Writing at this date, if we as- 
sume the story of the Moorish admixture to have some foundation in 
truth, one does not have to seek far for an explanation of the dark com- 
plexion of the Nanticoke. The "Moor" story would then date from 
about 1700, which is indeed the most likely period for it. 

At the present time these descendants, who have become domi- 
ciled in the pleasant country just north of Indian River in Delaware, 
near Millsboro, have effected an organization incorporated under the 
laws of the state, which they have called the Nanticoke Indian Associa- 
tion, under the leadership of Chief W. R. Clark, Assistant Chief Lin- 
coln Harmon; Treasurer, Howard Johnson; Secretary, Mrs. E. A. 
Johnson, and councilmen Warren Wright, Ferdinand Clark, Clinton 
Johnson. Their object is to perpetuate the identity of their tribe and 
to achieve social and educational benefit by holding themselves together 
under the recognition of their proper name. Ultimately they aspire to 
the opening of communications along social lines with that part of their 
tribe which so long ago moved away to Canada. Another small rem- 
nant of the Conoy is reported from Prince George and Charles coun- 
ties, Maryland, southeast of Washington. Mr. Mooney considered 
these to be descendants of the Piscataway band which was christened 
by Lord Baltimore's colonists in 1634. Another small mixed group is 
reported from Port Tobacco, Maryland, but the numbers of these two 
bands have never been taken. The location of the various mixed groups 
is indicated by triangles on the accompanying chart which shows the 
territories of the larger tribal bodies. 



Page Eleven 



We may now turn to a consideration of such customs as have 
survived in the knowledge of the Indian descendants themselves and 
those which have been recorded by early travelers in the eastern shore 
country as the distinguishing features of Nanticoke ethnology. 

Upon the arrival of the people who became known as Nanticoke 
into the region of the Maryland and Delaware coastal plain, an adapt- 
ation to local conditions must have developed a specialized form of 
culture among them. The absence of stone material in the eastern 
shore region, for instance, is undoubtedly responsible for the rise of 
trade with tribes on the western shore and in the foothills. The dif- 
ficulty of bringing stone into the region to be worked into implements 
made stone material of great value in much the same way as wood is 
regarded as a precious substance among the Arctic Eskimo. Very 
likely none of it was imported thoughtlessly and none of that which 
was brought in wasted. This would account for the smallness of the 
stone implements, arrow-heads, knives, axes and the like, which char- 
acterizes Nanticoke industry among those groups toward the Atlantic 
side. Moreover, the tools are marked with a finished technique, a del- 
icate form, and display great experience in the choice of material. The 
selection of material seems to have followed not only the demand for 
utility but a regard for beauty. For, judging by what has already been 
found in the Indian River country, few lots of stone tools could be 
found in the eastern states to surpass them in the respects just men- 
tioned. We might even say that the eastern shore natives were forced 
by the nature of their surrounding circumstances to develop the stone 
industry beyond the stage reached by neighboring cultures. John 
Widgon, a descendant of the Accomac of the lower peninsular who 
is extensively acquainted with eastern shore archaeology says that the 
natives obtained stone material from boulders left on the shore by 
stranded ice blocks brought down the Susquehanna in the spring floods. 
A word or two may be vouchsafed concerning the art in wood of the 
Nanticoke. Owing to the impossibility of obtaining large masses of 
stone out of which to construct heavy stone tools like which we find in 
other parts of the east, it seems that wherever hardwood could have 
served in industrial processes it was employed instead of stone. For 
example, the heavy stone pestles used by the eastern Algonkian every- 
where for the purpose of crushing corn into flour in a wooden log 
mortar, are everywhere absent from the soil in the Nanticoke country, 
while they abound in an astonishing degree even as near as the mouth 
of the Susquehanna. From the present-day descendants of the Nanti- 



Page Twelve 



coke, we learn that wooden corn-pounders are the rule, for they are 
still used by the Indian remnants in Delaware. Another instance 
showing considerable ingenuity of thought appears in the use of little 
bags of sand tied to the lower end of fish-nets to provide sinkers in- 
stead of the stone net-sinkers used everywhere in regions where stone 
can be found. 

Among the customs which are recorded for the Nanticoke in 
early times is the interesting and complicated form of burial which 
seems to have prevailed in early times among the tribes bordering the 
Gulf of Mexico. That the Nanticoke had acquired some of their early 
culture by contact with the southeastern tribes is clearly evident from 
this and other similarities. The form of burial referred to is the prac- 
tice of burying only the bones of the deceased, the flesh having been 
removed from the skeleton by professional priests who picked the skel- 
etons carefully with their finger-nails and preserved the flesh separate 
from the bones. The skeletons were then kept in the family of the 
deceased as sacred heirlooms. When these became too abundant the 
families conveyed them to burial pits where they were deposited with 
others and oftentimes covered with earth to form a mound. Such os- 
suaries are found occasionally on the eastern shore. John Widgon re- 
ports finding these communal burials occasionally in his surveys, and 
his material is exhibited in the collections of the Maryland Academy 
of Sciences in Baltimore. He states that he has found indications of 
as many as seventy burials in one cluster. Occasionally, moreover, he 
discovers them in shell-heaps in which case he has made a most inter- 
esting observation, namely, that the shells are found turned with the 
concave side upward in shell-heaps containing burials. This, he thinks, 
was to prevent the entrance of rain and surface water as much as pos- 
sible. The Nanticoke maintained the practice of bone burial even 
after they had left Maryland, for the missionaries, Zeisberger as well 
as Brainerd, both mentioned the custom among the Nanticoke when 
they were living on the middle Susquehanna near Shamokin. Among 
the descendants of these Indians, however, the custom seems to have 
been entirely forgotten, as burial customs of Christian form have for 
a long time been observed by them. 

We have mention of one other specific trait in connection with 
the customs and behavior of the early Nanticoke. They were accredited 
by several early writers, with the knowledge of concocting vegetable 
poisons. The fact that three or four times at least in colonial literature 
allusion was made to such knowledge among the tribes of the eastern 



Page Thirteen 



shore seems to make it a somewhat emphatic property. In Capt. John 
Smith's narrative he relates how Powhatan had engaged an Indian to 
go to the eastern shore and secure poison there with which to destroy 
his enemy at Jamestown. This belief in respect of the Nanticoke has 
survived among modern Indians. Even the Delawares, who are now 
residents of Oklahoma, far from their native haunts in Pennsylvania 
and New Jersey, relate the story of how they obtained their knowledge 
of witchcraft and conjuring from the Nanticoke. The descendants of 
the tribe today, however, seem to know nothing of the formula which 
made their ancestors famous among both Indians and Af arylanders. 
To be sure they preserve the knowledge of a good many medicinal 
plants but I have not succeeded in getting a legitimate poison formula. 
Among them yet a deep-rooted prejudice against certain innocent 
herbs and weeds may be a sign of former concern along these lines. 

One practice, however, has survived from ancient times. That is 
the custom of head-flattening. The Nanticoke mother even today be- 
lieves that by exerting a pressure upon the frontal and occipital region 
of the infant's skull for about the first three weeks of its life she can 
enhance the beauty of its form. Here again we have an extension of 
native practices which seem to be more characteristic of the tribes 
nearer to the Gulf, and I dare say that, even from what little we know 
of the ethnology of the original people of the eastern shore, a con- 
siderable influence from the tribes of the southeast had reached them. 
Their intensive agriculture, certain industries mentioned in connection 
with it, and some of the social and religious peculiarities just noted 
seem to bear to the south. In other respects, particularly in that 
of language, the tribes of the eastern shore were a branch of the Del- 
aware group which inhabited Pennsylvania and New Jersey, whose 
ancestry converges with the tribes about the Great Lakes from whence 
their tradition points to migration. 



Page Fourteen 




A Nanticoke of the Canadian branch. 



NOTE:-- 

Works relating to the Nanticoke and their Neighbors --- D. G. Brinton, 
"The Lenape and their Legends/' Library of Aboriginal American Literature, 
No. V. Phila. (1885). Articles -- Nanticoke and Conoy, Handbook of the 
American Indians, Bulletin 30, Bureau of American Ethnology, Washington, 
(1907,1910). J. Bozman, "History of Maryland." J. G. E. Heckewelder, 
"An Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations who 
once inhabited Pennysylvania; Phila. (1819.) The Life of David Brainerd; 
N. Y. (1838) . James Mooney, "The Powhatan Confederacy Past and Present," 
American Anthropologist, Vol.9, No. 1, (1907). C. C. Willoughby, (The 
Virginia Indians in the Seventeenth Century," (ibid) . M. R. Harrington," Reli- 
gion and Ceremonies of the Lenape;" Indian Notes and Monographs, Museum 
of the American Indian (Heye Foundation,) N. Y. (1921). F. G. Speck, 
"The Nanticoke Community of Delaware, "Contributions from the Museum of 
the American Indian, Vol.2, No. 4, N. Y. (1915). W. H. Babcock, "The 
Nanticoke Indians of Indian River, Delaware", American Anthropologist, N.S. 
Vol. 1, (1899). "Voyage to Virginia in 1649-50," Col. Norwood in Peter 
Force's Tracts, Vol. 3. No. 10, Washington, (1844). 



Page Fifteen 



H92 74 53V 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




0 003 257 960 7 



